Queen of Likes (16 page)

“Ella, I'm worried that your parents went crazy. Tell me what happened.”

“I can't,” she says as she tucks her bottle of hair dye into her backpack. It's weird but she still she hasn't put on any mascara or lip gloss.

“Please!”

She shakes her head and races out the door.

I stare after her, confused and upset. I slowly walk back to Mr. Morley's room, wondering if I lost my best friend for good.

I'm back from volunteering at the historical society. At least nobody over there thinks I'm Bad Karma. Anna said I did a great job sorting more photos. It's hard to believe that this Thursday will be my last day volunteering.

I'm sitting on the couch in the family room and Toby's squatting on the floor next to me. He's still got crumbs on his mouth from the donut he ate an hour ago. Dad biked with him to Voodoo Donuts and let him get their most awesome donut, the raspberry jelly–filled one shaped like a little screaming guy and covered with chocolate frosting and a pretzel pin.

I feel the donut voodoo doll's pain. It's almost dinnertime, but I'm not hungry. I think about how the hot dog–eating contest and Crazy Hair Day happened, and I wasn't a part of it. I don't even know who won the Craziest Hair contest or which grade participated the most.

I text in my mind to the patter of the rain hitting the roof:
I know nothing
.

“What are you doing?” asks Toby. He has his box of LEGOs with him. He has all kinds of new pieces because one of mom's friends whose kid graduated college gave away his LEGOs and Toby got all of them. Lots of little yellow pieces that are shaped like little cannons sit in a pile by his feet.

“What are you doing?” asks Toby again.

“I have no idea anymore.” My hands flop into my lap, where they look pale and lifeless and useless and silent.

That night I don't get much sleep. My best friend won't speak to me. I have no followers or friends. Maybe someone has made a voodoo doll of me. And that is why everything bad is sticking just like the pretzel in that donut.

My Stats:

1 best friend who UNLIKES me

1 Voodoo donut eaten

1 girl who has no idea how to fix this

Mood: Still beyond dismal

Before school starts, before I'm locked away for my last day, I see Bailey getting out of her car by the drop-off circle. The Bees and Ella huddle around Bailey but none of them will look directly at me. They are all dressed in identical white scoop-neck T-shirts and skinny jeans.

I consider saying,
It isn't Quadruplet Day
, but I don't say anything at all.

It's before advisory and I'm standing over by Ella's locker, hoping that she'll speak to me.

So far it's been silence. Ella slams her locker shut. She glares at me. That's just great. Bailey and the Bees approach and circle her like a fence. One of the banners that Ella made is posted next to them.
SEVENTH GRADE STAMPS OUT HUNGER.
Right now all I want to stamp out is the past two weeks.

Ella whirls around and actually speaks to me. “I'll tell you this much, Karma. You can't be trusted.”

Bailey and the Bees nod.

“You spent all of your time worrying about how many followers we had on our Spirit page. Was that really going to help us win the Spirit Stick? And you were constantly borrowing my phone. That was so annoying. You posted comments for me. You
LIKED
stuff. I know what I like: not you.”

“But I was—”

“Helping me?” She shakes her head. “If you haven't noticed, I pretty much ran publicity without you. And made posters, plus decorations. I don't need your help, Karma.”

Janel nudges Megan, and Megan nudges Bailey. Nobody has ever seen Ella this mad, including me.

“None of your so-called followers helped,” Ella sputters. “We're tied with eighth grade for points for Crazy Hair Day.” Then she points down the hallway, near the office where the canned food is stacked. “The eighth grade is way ahead on canned food and the sixth grade is catching up. Today's the final count. You were supposed to tell everybody about the Great Canned Food Sneak Attack, but that didn't happen.”

“But I did,” I protest. “I let all of our seventh-grade followers know.”

“Yeah, but did you ever check to see who followed the page?” asks Bailey. “Lots of those kids don't go to Merton. They just followed it because it was you.”

“The sixth graders don't even have Snappypic,” says Megan. “Their tower is higher than ours because they passed out fliers on actual paper and because they actually told people in person. You know, word of mouth.”

I shrug, even though deep inside I'm feeling more than a little bad. “So old school,” I say.

Ella shakes her head. “Well, it worked.”

I feel like a creepy statue at a haunted house. Like my body is frozen permanently in a position of humiliating horror. “They picked me because of my followers. Because I'm great at Snappypic. I told them”—I look at the Bees—“I wouldn't do it without you. I made them take you, Ella. They didn't even want you.”

Bailey's face turns a shade of red deeper than a fire truck.

Janel blinks in surprise. Megan is still trying to smile.

I tap my chest. “That's why they picked me. Without me,” I say, and the words fall out of my mouth like sharp rocks, “you'd be nothing.”

Ella stares at me in shock. Her mouth is moving but no words are coming out.

I have gone too far. I know it right away, but I couldn't help it. I was doing all of this for her, in a way. And she didn't even know it. Instead she's making me feel bad. For trying. Trying to do what? To borrow her phone to reach out to people, to be
LIKED.
And to get her
LIKED
too.

Ella's eyes water and my stomach turns.

I whisper, “I'm sorry,” but it's too late.

She whirls around and flees into the crowded hallway, away from me.

As I stand there, alone in the crowded hallway, I'm disgusted with myself.

I am not copublicity chair of Spirit Week.

I am not on Snappypic.

I am not
LIKED
.

I am not really Ella's best friend. Not anymore.

When I was little, I remember thinking on the very last day of first grade in Mrs. Fitch's class,
I am not a first grader
.

But then during the summer I wasn't quite a second grader yet, either.

So then I thought—
I am not a second grader.

The summer was the time in between being something.

But this isn't summer. It's March, and yet I feel like I'm in between being one thing and something else. For a moment I think about my bat mitzvah reading. Moses left the palace but he had something else better to do.

I just don't know what that something else is yet.

I've got to be in the suspension room in five minutes. The bell is about to ring and my jail is located in a completely different wing of the school. Right now I'm at school with everyone else but I'm completely alone.

No Snappypic.

No followers.

No friends. Actual friends.

And this is when Milton P. decides to march up to me.

“Hell-o, Karma,” Milton P. says in his slightly robot-y voice. “I agree with you about the Millennium Falcon. Do you want to discuss this?”

I throw up my hands, screaming, “I do not want to discuss LEGOs, Milton P. I do not like LEGOs. Go away!” I swing my hand toward him, and his shoe box goes flying.

We all watch in horror as it launches into the air like a real spaceship, only a real spaceship lands; it has landing gear and falls safely into the ocean.

But what falls out of the shoe box has no landing gear. And actually, it
is
a spaceship. A LEGO spaceship, a complicated one like the ones Toby makes, falls out of the box and splinters into what seems like a thousand pieces.

That's
what's inside the mysterious shoe box? I feel like screaming to Ella, “Come look!” But of course I can't do that.

Milton P. looks so astonished, not in a spy way, but in a real-person way—a regular kid who has lost something special to him. I know that feeling.

Bug, one of Milton P.'s semifriends, lunges over, screaming, “Dude, what did you do to him?! Dude, that was given to him by his
dad
!”

Milton P. is sitting, crying, his nose running, curled up over his LEGO pieces.

Oh. Wow. I feel. Extra. Hugely. Terrible.

I've done a lot of bad things.

But this may be the worst.

As Milton P. looks at his LEGOs spread across the floor of the Merton Middle School hallway, he opens his mouth and bellows.

Milton P. will never speak to me again, and I will probably never speak to Auggie or Ella or Bailey or Megan or Janel ever again. And Milton P., even though I told him that I'd fix the Millennium Falcon model. Even though I told him I'd buy him a thousand model spaceships.

I'm dragging myself home, dazed and upset, when I spot Annette Black practically skipping on the other side of the street. When I was little, she was my favorite babysitter ever. She showed me how to do a perfect handstand and she's the one who first showed me Snappypic.

She waves at me and gives me a big smile as she crosses the street. She's one of the smiley-est people I know. “What's going on?” she asks as she heads over to me. “I haven't seen you at religious school in such a long time.” She bounces toward me like she might do a cartwheel. “We miss you. Especially the kindergartners.” Last year in sixth grade, I used to help out with little kids at my synagogue.

I shrug. “I've just been so busy. Soccer. Studying for my bat mitzvah.”

“Don't you have over ten thousand followers on Snappypic?”

My throat squeezes so tightly that I can't get a full breath. I can't bring myself to tell her I have zero followers right now, along with everything else that stupid phone and site have cost me at this point.

“Well, you beat me.” Her blond ponytail flips in the air as she shakes her head. “I'm not really doing that anymore. Snappypic, I mean. I slowed down in high school. This year I'm taking three AP classes. I'm editor of the paper and on the cheer squad, so I'm doing a ton of stuff I like.”

“That's cool,” I say. Rain starts to drizzle down now. I grab my jacket out of my backpack and stuff my camera into a waterproof pocket.

Annette pops open an umbrella. “Your photos are so good. The ones I've seen on Snappypic.”

I swallow hard and confess. “My parents closed my account.”

“Oh, that's too bad.” She pats my shoulder. “You'll figure out something awesome to do. It's really good to see you.” The driving rain plasters her hair against her face.

“You too.” More and more water pours out of the sky. I push my hood farther over my eyes as I dodge a puddle that's forming on the sidewalk. And then I think maybe I had already figured out awesome things to do. And maybe, just maybe, I was doing them already.

My Stats:

400 pieces of LEGOs spread in the hallway

1 former best friend who is very, very loud about her madness at me

0 things to
LIKE
right now

2 hands free to start making something awesome

Mood: No longer surprised by anything

Toby and I lay down on our stomachs on the family room floor. He has been showing me how LEGOs fit together and how you follow the directions, step by step. It's sort of like photography. At least that's what Ren was saying today in class. We learned all about depth of field and how you can focus on just one thing that counts.